


Roots

by electropeach



Category: Fitz and the Fool Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Just be happy damn it, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Off-screen Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electropeach/pseuds/electropeach
Summary: I couldn't tear my eyes away from the Wolf. Even resting, nose to tail, he was immense, and looked so real. The wind should have stirred his fur, the snow gathered on his back and head and on the curve of his nose, next to his eye, should have made him sneeze and shake his head. But he was stone, and no matter how real his fur seemed, no matter how close to opening his eyes seemed, for now he was no more than that.Years after the events of Assassin's Fate, Bee visits the Wolf.(Absolutely self-indulgent fix-it-ness ahead, realists be warned!)
Relationships: Bee Farseer & Beloved, Bee Farseer & FitzChivalry Farseer, FitzChivalry Farseer & Nighteyes, FitzChivalry Farseer & The Fool, FitzChivalry Farseer/Amber, FitzChivalry Farseer/The Fool, Molly Chandler/FitzChivalry Farseer
Comments: 17
Kudos: 55





	Roots

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly canon-compliant, but canon may have been slightly bent at times for artistic reasons. Post-canon, so there may be spoilers of virtually every work of the series.
> 
> A word on Beloved's pronouns: I would have preferred to use "they" for Beloved, but that turned out too confusing since I also used "they" to refer to the entity of the three in the Wolf, so I ended up using "he/him", which also matches how Bee thinks of them in canon. It's perhaps not ideal, but I hope it will suit the purposes of this fic, at least.
> 
> I enjoyed writing this very much, and let my inner bad poet run rampant on it, so consider yourself warned!

The Wolf towered over me.

I stared up, still breathless from the walk, sweat slicking my hair to my skull beneath my woolen cap. I felt Kettricken's mittened hand alight on my shoulder, for a moment, squeezing it through my thick winter clothes. Comforting me, giving me courage.

"Will you be alright, dear?" the old queen asked me gently.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the Wolf. Even resting, nose to tail, he was immense, and looked so real. The wind should have stirred his fur, the snow gathered on his back and head and on the curve of his nose, next to his eye, should have made him sneeze and shake his head. But he was stone, and no matter how real his fur seemed, no matter how close to opening his eyes seemed, for now he was no more than that.

The words almost got stuck in my throat, because how could I even begin to face this alone, but I forced them past my lips. "Of course." I looked up at her; even stooped with age, she was still taller than me. I grew so woefully slowly. Her blue eyes regarded me with almost unbearable kindness. I found I couldn't meet them. "Please, go ahead. I know you wished to see King Verity."

"Yes," she said, and I was abashed to see tears suddenly well in her eyes. "Yes, I did. It has been so long..." She faltered, then looked at me again. "If you're quite sure, my dear," she said, and, for some reason, took off her mitten to cup my face in her hand. For a moment, her hand was warm against my cold cheek, as warm as the smile she gave me, and then she was walking away, slowly making her way towards her husband.

I listened to her boots crunching on the snow until all I could hear were the occasional whistling of wind in the bared trees, or a small animal picking his way over the snow-covered stone garden. Even this far from the Skill road, animal life was scarce.

All the while, my eyes never left my fathers.

My fathers, I repeated to myself, rolling the thought around in my aching head, trying to look for a way to make it more accessible. It was one thing to know a thing, and quite another to understand it, let alone accept it. 

Some time ago, alone and missing my father protecting me, missing my Wolf-Father bidding me be strong, missing even the teacher I had so vehemently opposed to guiding me, I had wallowed in a deep pool of what-ifs, going over my life and looking for things I might have done differently, allowing my fathers to remain by my side. All of them, or even any of them. Despite the long hours spent taking notes on my father’s stories on his death vigil, despite all the days spent perusing the scrolls he had never gotten around to burning back at Withywoods, there was so much I still wished to ask him. Despite having Wolf-Father accompany me for so many months, so entwined in my thoughts that I sometimes wondered if I had made him up after all, I would have given anything to have the comfort of his presence back.

And even Beloved. Having read all my father had written of him, and to him, I regretted now so recklessly, childishly hating him, despite still feeling that my resentment had been justified. If only he had never left my father; if only he had returned sooner; if only I had met him under different circumstances. There was no denying that there was much of him in me, much that my father’s journals made me think he could have helped me explore and understand. But he was also the reason my father was no longer with me, the reason I had been stolen. Even now, he had what I didn’t, and I wanted to hate him for it, like a jealous child, even as I had learned, from many late-night discussions with Kettricken, to see their union as a thing to rejoice in, something broken finally made whole.

She had wept as she had spoken of her feelings to me, of her many memories of my fathers. Of things my father had never known to write down: of the smile the Fool’s jokes had brought on my father’s lips, of the quick glance the Fool had used to shoot at my father just before launching into a ridiculous tale to make him laugh, of the tugging on her mind that she now knew was her Wit sensing Nighteyes speaking mere moments before the Fool had turned to scratch the wolf’s ears, and of the expression of amazement and bewildered awe on my father’s face when that happened. Of the hollowness in the Fool’s eyes when they had heard that the Bastard Prince had died in Regal’s dungeons. Of the long hours spent talking with my father after he had emerged from the Skill pillar to find a month missed, and his Fool long gone. Oh, she had not understood it, not completely, but she remembered well that it had not taken full understanding to know the rightness of Verity’s decision, either, and had had the heart to find peace in their peace, and joy in their joy. 

My queen was larger of heart than I was, but no matter how I clung to my resentment out of spite, clutched at the thorny, protective walls my experiences had wrought around me, her kindness and patience had eroded through them, and some of her understanding and acceptance had filtered through. I wished I had known them, all three, as well as she had. Not just the flawed father, the mysterious spirit, and the stranger reading my journals, but the boy who had flung out his entire soul to give Verity a chance to know her, the jester who had stood by her side through her child’s stillbirth, and the wolf that had helped her carry her sorrows in the Mountains.

All I had wished for a was a chance to know them as well as she had.

And it had suddenly occurred to me that there was no reason a White Prophet should only be able to see possible futures; why not possible pasts? Why not see if there was one where I could have kept them?

Useless, perhaps, but for someone firmly ensconced in her sense of injustice, loneliness, and separateness, for a person of many years but with the appearance of a young girl, for a child torn from her home and turned Destroyer at the tender age of ten, it had made no sense to avoid yet another way to make myself feel worse. Miserable and almost yearning to discover that there had been a path that might have allowed me to keep them with me, that my sense of being wronged by fate was justified, I had plunged into those possible pasts and untrodden paths.

I had discovered much more than I had expected, and, once set on the path of remembering things that had never happened, had been unable to stop them. And like any Dream of a White Prophet, these paths demanded to be spoken or written, to be shared.

I reached out to touch the Wolf.

Like a chasm opening at my feet, the Wolf flared to life, the spirits within unfurling from their deep slumber to reach for mine. I thought the ground trembled, but it was only the Wolf, shrugging snow from his back, flowing to his feet, stretching and shaking himself as one does after long sleep. Deep eyes opened, blinked, and regarded me serenely.

_Little Bee_ , they greeted me solemnly.

My eyes burned, suddenly, my throat unbearably tight. The memories rattled inside my mind. I found my breath came in sharp, rapid inhales and exhales through my nose, my lips clamped together to keep them from trembling. I was going to crumble under the weight of my stolen memories and my own emotions.

Quickly, before I could reconsider it, I pressed my hands against the side of their neck.

I felt the great Wolf shift, as though attempting to shake me off, but I followed, and they cared too much for me to try again. _No, cub_ , they still rebuked me gently. _Keep your memories. We are whole._

_Not yet_ , I disagreed, pushing firmly against the Skilled suggestion to remove my hands from the carved fur. _Stop that, Father. I’m not trying to dispose of my unhappy memories by giving them away. What I have to give is yours already._

I sensed intrigue; a wolf’s ears turning inquisitively, my father lifting a brow in surprise, Beloved leaning forward in interest. Permission granted, they seemed to say. Their walls melted before me, and I poured forth like a river bursting through a dam. A violent shiver ran through me, as though my entire body wished to shake itself free of these memories.

_Please take them, these are yours_ , I begged them with a gasp, and let my Dreams flow into them, all the paths not taken.

And that was what they were. A White Prophet dreams in hints and prophesies, in metaphors and wordplays, and never knows what each dream means until it has come to pass. A White Prophet looks at a person, at a place, at a thing, and sees a hundred different outcomes branching from each one, splitting and spilling over into dozens and hundreds of more possibilities, possible only once one of the first hundred outcomes has taken place.

There were minor paths that changed little and joined the course of what had truly happened with relatively few changes to the end result: my rescue party setting off a day or so earlier, making it in time for my father to be the one to kill Dwalia and Symphe, for example. Most paths diverged from the actual events much more radically. There was my father growing so angry at Shun’s dismissive behavior with me that he sent her back to Buckkeep. Without Shun to help me, I had accidentally revealed my sex to my captors within the first week and been killed, because a girl could not possibly be the Unexpected Son. There was my father choosing to exchange a few words with Beloved’s first messenger before joining Winterfest celebrations with my mother, thus managing to speak with her before she was killed; on that path, he had embarked on a mission to rescue his friend immediately, perished in the attempt, and I had never been born. On another branch of that path, he had succeeded, returned with Beloved, and my blind teacher had guided and sheltered me from birth, my oddities explained from the start by the only one that could. 

Dimly, I knew that someone was weeping. Was it me, sobbing angry tears at the lost possibilities of home and hearth, whole and together with my entire family? Or was it one of them? All of them?

Further back I went, far beyond my time and into what had been before me, and I clenched my teeth and poured it all into them. I spared them nothing. Not the myriad ways the young Beloved had perished, by illness, accident or violence, before ever making it to Buckkeep; not the hundreds of possible deaths that had taken my father before his tenth year. Not the ones in which my father’s maternal grandfather had been taken by the Blood Plague mere months before he would have taken his grandson to Prince Verity, leaving little Keppet to grow a dark-haired Mountain warrior and King Shrewd’s Fool waiting, waiting forever in Buckkeep for a bastard that would never come. Or the ones in which Beloved had never managed to escape Clerres the first time, had never whispered for a king to never do a thing before considering what he could no longer do once it was done, had never prevented Shrewed from discreetly doing away with the inconvenient bastard prince; the ones in which Chade Fallstar had not been my father’s mentor and guardian, but his executioner.

Not even the dozens of ways they had failed to save one another did I spare them. My father dead by Regal’s poison without the Fool’s seapurge, Lord Golden killed by the Piebalds before my father could return with Dutiful, my father dying in Lord Golden’s chambers because the Fool had managed to have him freed a moment too late, the Fool bleeding to death in my father’s arms in a snowy marketplace because my father had stabbed three more times. My father cold in his grave after Regal’s dungeons, never awakened from his death-sleep because the Fool had sent Burrich to the Mountains with Queen Kettricken, not gone himself. The Fool crowned with the Rooster Crown and burned on a funeral pyre because my father had never truly believed that he could be the Catalyst, the Changer, had never thought to defy fate. Not even the madness or sorrow that claimed the surviving one after each of these deaths did I spare them.

But for every death, there was a life; for every sacrifice, there was a reward. There was the Fool returning from the final battle of the Red Ships War on Girl-on-Dragon’s back, choosing to accompany the dragons to the Mountains rather than remaining in Buck, sliding down from her back in the stone garden and turning to see my father and Nighteyes waiting for him. The three of them left the Mountain Kingdom together, travelled the world together, and when Amber set up her shop in Bingtown, Tom Badgerlock and his large dog moved in with her, giving the Traders a juicy source of gossip on whether or not the two were properly married.

There was the young Fitz managing to talk the King’s Fool into going down to Buckkeep Town with him once, drawing him into the games and jests he shared with the other children there. The Fool, far too old in years and purpose to truly be a child, too different to be anyone’s friend, wept himself to sleep that night at how sweet that taste of childhood had been, and after that accompanied my father down as often as he could. Together with the other children they pulled pranks on merchants, sipped the cheapest ale in taverns, ran errands for adults for a coin or two, played tag on the beach, and once, Molly Nosebleed gave a cobbler’s boy a sound smack for mocking their strange new friend.

There was my father taking control of Buckkeep after Kettricken and Shrewd had been spirited away, after Regal had abandoned it to the raiders, with the coastal duchies rallying under his flag. It was a sad path, for on it both Kettricken and the baby she carried perished before the war was over, but from the ashes of that sorrow rose King Changer, so named by his grandfather's loyal fool on his coronation day. With his wife Queen Celerity by his side, Changer steered the kingdom away from the brink of destruction it had teetered on.

There was my father and Nighteyes setting off on their exploration of the world after the Red Ships War a few weeks later than they truly had, enough that the day they visited Bingtown was the day before Paragon was to sail. Enough that the liveship they saw as they walked the docks was, indeed, the mangled Paragon; enough that the ship’s carpenter, leaning on the railing next to the figurehead spotted them on the decks, and in her shock called out to them. Already thought strange in Bingtown, she further scandalized them by leaping up, rushing down to the docks, and throwing herself into the waiting arms of a Six Duchies barbarian. Her quest to rescue Vivacia was the voyage on which my father and Nighteyes resolved to never sail again, and it was my father’s dark glare and clenched fists rather than instinctive Skilling while dream-walking that saved Amber from Lavoy.

Further back I flowed, my Dreamed memories a wild current and yet also a howling wind; I spread the wings of my mind and allowed it to carry me far into the past, my three fathers mere helpless passengers on my mad voyage. Far back into a time when they had been Realder and his pale jester, and she had leapt upon the pillar at the Elderling marketplace and joyously announced Realder’s intention to create a dragon, happy and certain that together with her beloved, they were about to complete her quest as the White Prophet. My fathers remembered some of it already, remembered her joy turning into despair as Realder’s dragon never woke, never rose to take her flying, and her horror that they had failed, had allowed the world to keep spiraling into darkness, unaware that their failure had left Realder’s dragon exactly where he needed to be: mired in the stone, waiting for my father and the Fool to give him life.

And then to a time when my father had been a slave in the Chalced states and Beloved a foreigner passing through and befriending him, and my father had made a deal with his master to earn his freedom and be able to travel with his friend. Thus they had started the custom of slaves having the option to earn their freedom earring, culminating in a woman working herself free so that she could move back to the Six Duchies, start a family, and have a grandson who would one day be Buckkeep’s stablemaster.

And again to a time when my father had been captain of King Wisdom’s guard, and Beloved a minstrel singing a song of the Elderlings one evening, a song that had stuck to the captain’s head and that he had later recited to his king, prompting him to seek out the mythical beings and beg for their help. And back again, to a time when my father had been one of Taker’s warriors, and Beloved one of the prisoners captured with the fortress that would one day become Buckkeep. Their eyes had met, and my father had known he wanted to stay, and had said as much to his commander, and so Taker had settled in Buck.

Always right there at every tipping point, always nudging the flow of events so that the future I lived in, the future they had built, could be possible. Often in the most miniscule ways, by a word or a gesture, had they shaped the flow of time, rarely directly involved in the greater events but always there to start them. They had been the couple who raised an orphan who later became the woman to negotiate peace between Buck and Farrow, and so Five Duchies became Six. They had been the children who played too close to the silver-veined black stone near Kelsingra, and so had the uses of memory stone been discovered. They had been very first dragon and human to bond, and so had Elderlings come to be. The farther back I tracked, the more foreign were the memories, now so much removed from anything human that I could barely wrap my mind around them. The first two dragons to suggest going north, to discover the rudimentary settlements of the few humans the Mountain Kingdom and Six Duchies had then been.

And then, a dragon’s ancestral memory.

“No!” I suddenly screamed.

I tried to stop, to rein myself in, but I had gone too far, and was helpless to stop myself from unraveling. Again I was an acorn tossed about in a rushing current, again I could feel my essence spilling into the void, my self fading and blending into the whisper and murmur of a myriad voices. In my sharing, I had started to Skill, to unconsciously reach for more memories to offer to my fathers, and the river had swept me away. 

And just as I tried to draw breath to scream again my denial into the thundering void, an arm looped around me and stopped my hurtling down the current. Or a mind wrapped around mine, and closed the millions of whispering sounds outside. I did not know; I did not know whether I existed, whether I had a body or just a soul or perhaps neither.

_Hush, cub_ , someone murmured in my ear, _you have come far enough. Rest now._

I opened my eyes.

I was lying in a bed, snugly wrapped in soft furs and covered with a woolen blanket. The room around me was a small log cabin, with a merrily crackling fire in the hearth just across from me. There was a kettle bubbling gently on the fire, and tantalizing aromas filled the little space.

Next to the hearth, sitting at a table, was my father, his head bent over leatherwork. He was fixing a harness. Seated opposite to him was Beloved, humming quietly and whittling away at a piece of wood. And at my father’s feet, Nighteyes, curled up comfortably, nose buried in his tail.

“Da?” I asked, and the voice that came out of my mouth made me look down at myself in surprise. I was a little child, my hands very small and pale as I raised them to study them.

All three looked up at me in unison. They smiled. “Awake at last,” my father said, and there was a slight echo to his voice, as though he were speaking in more than one voice.

I opened my mouth to ask them where I was, but they already knew. Beloved answered me. “You were shielding so well that we could not push you back into your own body. So we thought it best to shelter you here, for a moment. Let you remember yourself again.” Again, there was an echo. “You are not quite in the Wolf, but I’m afraid you can’t stay for long, or your residence may become permanent.”

_We are whole_ , Nighteyes continued. _And we love you, and you are our pack, but you are not of this whole_. He softened his rejection of me by lolling out his tongue, smiling at me, and I knew what he meant. The echo was more pronounced with him, like hearing overlapping thoughts in the images he framed at me. Whereas his images were largely black and white, someone superimposed a brilliantly colored version upon them, and yet another one had muted colors but with certain parts highlighted.

I was within their shared mind. I looked down at myself; this was how they remembered me. This ghost of home and hearth was a form they gave to their thoughts, their unity, to help my mind find my place in it. It was a metaphor, everything they were and had known and felt, everyone that had shaped them through love or hate, all displayed in symbols. Kettricken’s bow and Verity’s sword leaning against the wall next to the door, side by side, as though at any given moment they might stroll in, laughing, grab them, and head out for a hunt, young and happy and in love. My mother's lavender-scented candles on every even surface, their flames flickering merrily, winking at me, fresh as though she had just made them. Above the hearth, on a shelf, a small, overflowing jewelry box, King Shrewd's pin leaning against it, Burrich's earring glinting blue next to it, Dutiful's necklace with the figurine of Elliania spilling out of it. Beside it, in vase, a variety of bird feathers and needles and yarn standing in a haphazard mess: Lady Patience and Lacey. With their memories wrapped around me, I recognized these things as surely as if I had been there to first see them.

I looked down at the blanket in my lap, and it was the quilt my mother had made for me when I was born. The piece of wood Beloved was carefully whittling was a ship, a ship with a beautiful figurehead of a woman, with little characters on her deck: the Vivacia, and already finished and waiting for her to join him on the table, a wooden model of the Paragon. There was a decanter of apricot brandy on a small table next to the hearth, and a plate of ginger cakes next to it. The stew bubbling on the fire was a favorite recipe of Cook Sara’s, and the dreamcatcher decorating their window was the work of a loving older sister’s hands, once made for a young Beloved who could not yet understand his visions and cried to his sister about his terrifying dreams. On a nightstand, next to the bed, flowers floated in a shallow pot of water, fresh as though Garetha had just picked them. A rack of Chade’s scrolls stood between the table and the wall, and at that end of the table, there were my father’s ink pots and half-finished scrolls of their own. My drawing of a bee. A shopping list by my mother, penned carefully in her awkward hand. A translation for Chade. A letter to Jek, and another to Joffron, in Beloved’s slanted hand. And I could not see it, but knew, nonetheless, that there was a den just outside the cottage, a den where Nighteyes’ mother and the other cubs of his litter slept, nose to tail.

I turned my head, and there was one corner that the warmth and light of the room could not reach. A corner that, I knew, held all the hurts and pains of their long lives. Just barely, if I strained my eyes, I could glimpse an edge of a cage, and a broken rooster crown perched on top of it. In there, were I to step into that corner, the air would be cold as it had been on Aslevjal, and filled with whispers from old quarrels, of venomous words spoken in anger and haste. There I would find the stench of Regal’s dungeons, the smell of fire and blood in the torture room of Clerres. Hidden there were all their losses, all their tears, all their sorrows. All their deaths, and the deaths they felt were laid at their door. Always there, always present, always a part of them, but here, in their safe haven, held at bay by stronger things, by love and trust and oneness.

And hanging from the wall next to the door, a black and white motley next to a shirt with numerous hidden pockets, a glorious azure jacket, an axe, and a dress. The meaning could not have been plainer: in here, all disguises were at last put aside, all masks finally laid to rest. In here, they could be themselves, all of themselves, with no names attached, no parts cut out to fit a character. Names and lies had no meaning now, here where there were no yesterdays and no tomorrows.

_Only the Now_ , Nighteyes echoed my thoughts, and I knew I had read this somewhere, in one of the numerous scrolls my father had penned.

“The time that stretches eternal,” I whispered, and they smiled again, as though pleased that I understood, “and is really the only time there is. Then, in that place…” I faltered, the words sticking to my throat as tears welled in my eyes. _Then, in that place, you will finally have time to be yourself_ , my father had written, decades ago, never knowing that that glimpse of the Now had been a glimpse to his final fate, their final reward. Time to be whole. 

A final reward they had never been meant to have. All their lives had ended unhappily, with them torn apart, never allowed to grow old together. Beloved had been meant to die on Aslevjal. My father had been meant to bid him farewell and light his funeral pyre, Nettle to remain his only child, and his stone wolf forever unfinished, mired in stone as Girl-on-a-dragon had been, lacking that which would have made it whole.

But my father had refused, had wrenched fate from its intended path, had stolen Beloved from his death, and created this world, this future. Where in all his previous lives he had battled fate in vain, only for it to claim him once more, for his path to run the same course it always did, this time he had succeeded. Why? How?

I pondered about that for a moment, and then knew. Looking back at their past lives now, I finally saw what I hadn’t before: what was missing. In each one, my mother had perished too early to be anything but a friend or a childhood sweetheart to be missed, to be avenged, to be mourned. In each one, Nighteyes had been only a wolf, his path never crossing my father’s.

The Wit. This was the first time my father had been born with the Wit.

And with that Wit, not knowing or understanding he was different, not knowing or understanding that he was the Catalyst, he had _repelled_ at Molly’s father, my grandfather, on the very first day he had met her, and prevented the blow that would have knocked little Molly to the ground hard enough for her to hit her head, hard enough that she would have died of bleeding within her brain mere days later. And just like that, my father had created a new path, a path where Molly Chandler could grow to adulthood, could be the catalyst that enabled others to be heroes. On that day, my mother had become possible, and through her, daughters willing to bully dragons, fathers angry enough to _repel_ a stone dragon to its knees, sons with arrows that flew true, and daughters that burned down libraries and ended civilizations.

And with the Wit, he had bonded to Nighteyes. Nighteyes had been the missing agent in their whole, the balance that allowed them to see beyond existing paths, to see and take other routes. By the Wit my father had lived when he should have died in Regal’s dungeons, and by the Wit he had revived Beloved when he should have let go, had mended what was broken and bid his blood flow in his veins again.

Another thought came to me. Wit it had been, not Skill, that laced the joining, the moment of oneness they had shared in the stone garden after Beloved’s death, that had taken that joining and made something new. Made me, the impossible child, and planted me deep within my father’s soul to wait for my mother to make me human.

Made possible when my father unknowingly saved my mother. Created when my father breathed life into my other father. I owed my entire existence to my father’s Wit.

Created at that moment of pain and fear and horror, I thought suddenly, and the room was abruptly a lot less warm. Created to be the vessel of their vengeance? I had barely waited to be ten before fate had carried me to their tormentors, and I had brought their world crashing down about them. I had never flinched at killing those who had created Ilistore.

They sensed the sudden change in my mood, and looked horrified.

“Oh, Bee, no. Never that!” Beloved whispered, and my father got up and came to sit on the bed next to me, opening his arms to me. I hesitated, then allowed him to embrace me. Saturated in their memories and emotions as I already was, there was no point to avoiding his touch.

What a precious feeling, to be held safe in your father’s arms.

A weight settled on my legs, Nighteyes curling up comfortably atop my mother’s blanket. My father’s hand cupped the back of my head, full of curly blonde hair again, and my little fists curled up in his shirt of simple homespun as he rocked me. I was small, and allowed to be small, a child once more. Behind my father’s shoulder, Beloved hovered, teary-eyed, until a glance from me assured him of his welcome. Here, bathed in the gentle current of their emotions, it was impossible to doubt his unflinching love for my father, his unabashed joy in me, his sorrow over how we had met and how poorly he had handled our meeting. Impossible to hate him.

Not vengeance, they assured me. Was not the moment of my creation, above all, a moment of love, finally acknowledged? Of life willingly given? Of oneness, of sharing? Of victory, of visions fulfilled and yet grim fates avoided? Of these things had my soul been unwittingly wrought, they told me, never hate or desire for revenge. Memory and emotion, they wrapped around me, and let me remember that moment, not as I had before, as an onlooker, but exactly as they had experienced it. This was how I had begun. This was how my spirit had formed, a spirit later taken in by my mother, who had carried me and gently shaped me into her child, flesh and blood, and set my heart beating.

They held me until I could gather my pieces back together, separate myself from their memories and become me again. Still they remained beside me, my father and Beloved seated on the edge of the bed, and Nighteyes rolling on his side and beginning a thorough cleaning of his toes. All three looked away as I dried my tears, as though they didn't know exactly what I was feeling, as though the room wasn't warmer again at the dizzying knowledge of how loved I was, as though the flames on my mother's candles didn't leap and shine brighter.

"How is everyone?" my father asked, almost casually.

I laughed at his attempt at normalcy. "Well," I said, "everyone is well. Nettle has taken an apprentice, and is grooming him to take over as Skillmaster. She wants to move to Withywoods with Riddle. My little niece Hope has started noticing other teenagers a lot more, recently, so perhaps they want to take her away from any temptations. Kettricken says she looks just like mother did when she was young." I paused, once more trying to reconcile my pretty, slim niece with the spring to her step with the mother I remembered, with her round, kind face and full, soft figure. My father smiled and allowed me a glimpse of a young girl running on a beach, her red skirts flapping on the wind, her dark curls whipping around her face as she darted a playful glance over her shoulder. Ah, I thought, I could see the resemblance now.

I knew a moment’s regret that I looked so little like my mother, that no one would ever look at me and say, “Well, you are a spitting image of your parents!” At that, my father exchanged a glance with Beloved, as though they still needed to, and remembered for me a lithe child in black-and-white motley, his wispy hair flying in every direction like my curly blonde hair had, doing cartwheels across Buckkeep Castle’s great hall to entertain other children. Beloved, in turn, drew my attention to the children studying their letters by the hearth while the younger children followed the tumbler; there was a young boy of ten, his head bowed protectively over the good paper Master Fedwren had trusted in his care, ink on his fingers and on his cheek as he sketched his symbols with careful focus. I may not have looked like my mother, but I did look like my fathers.

And then, hesitantly, almost shyly, Beloved remembered for me a tall man with blue eyes and fair hair; one of his fathers. And then another man, stocky and dark as the other was tall and fair: I had his ears. A woman, green-eyed and with the kindest face I had ever seen, who had my long fingers and graceful hands, and finally, a young woman, smiling down at little Beloved with my smile, the skin around her eyes crinkling just as mine did in the looking glass, the smallest dimple just where it was on my left cheek. I was almost holding my breath, as though a gasp or a sigh might shatter these gossamer memories, faded and guarded so carefully for so long. My eyes stung with tears that I was entrusted with them, but Beloved assured me that they were mine, my blood, my family, if only I wanted them.

Oh, I did look like my family after all, and perhaps somewhere there were people that would notice that.

Again, they allowed me a moment to gather myself.

"Dutiful is a grandfather,” I continued, almost abruptly. “King-in-waiting Prosper has a daughter, and Queen Elliania has taken it as a personal victory that the Farseer line finally has a female heir. Dutiful is beside himself and spoils the girl rotten.” My father chuckled at that, and Beloved beamed at me, at yet another Farseer heir. “Per has just been appointed Stablemaster of Buckkeep. He has yet to become Tallestman, but he has, rather humbly, decided that to be a stablemaster so renowned that the king himself went to Withywoods to offer him the position is just enough to compensate for that. He is said to be fast friends with Lord Ash, one of Queen Kettricken’s closest confidantes, who watches over her whenever her bodyguard, Lady Spark, is away. Lady Spark and Queen Kettricken accompanied me here, too." I found a smile for them. "In fact, they told me to give you their love, while Spark stayed to set up our camp and Kettricken went to see King Verity."

A shiver went through me as I said that, and jolted, I looked at Beloved to find him staring back with a similarly shaken expression. Something in my words had triggered a memory of a dream, one I had dreamed while still a child in my mother's care, one he had dreamed on his way to Buckkeep all those years ago, one dreamed by dozens of other Whites over the centuries: a white fox curling up to sleep and becoming snow.

"Ah, so that's what it meant," we whispered at the same time, because that was what he would have said, and my father rolled his eyes at us, because that was what he would have done, and Nighteyes flicked his ears inquisitively, because that was what a wolf would have done. But they shared everything, now, and knew just as I did that Spark and I would find our queen comfortably curled up against Verity-as-dragon's foreleg, finally at rest, her final words breathed against his stone skin: "At last, my love."

My vision doubled as they mourned with me. Kettricken, silver-haired and infinitely patient, quizzing me about my lessons, soothing back my hair during my changing fever, beaming at me as she presented me with a crook-tailed cat, brought from Withywoods because the cat had walked up to her on her visit and demanded to be taken to me. How proud she had been, both to so delight me, and to have understood the cat! Kettricken, young and pale and barely more than a child, peeking from behind her brother's back, anxious but defiant over poisoning my father. Kettricken asleep with her head on the Fool's shoulder, exhausted by their escape and her pregnancy, both of them huddled against a tree for the small shelter it could provide. Kettricken leading the people of Buck on a hunt for the Forged; Kettricken with wind in her hair and a bow in her hand.

I wept like a child, furious, selfish tears that I had lost yet another parent, angry at her for not even saying goodbye, and angry at myself for not realizing that she had done just that, every evening on our way here, stroking my hair as I fell asleep, as though I were still a little child. She had bid me farewell each night for fear that she might not wake in the morning, might never make it to the man she had loved in the dawn of her years, and it was frustratingly difficult to stay angry at her for succeeding. Even without a drop of Skill in her, I suddenly knew she had always known she would return here in the end, suddenly understood what she had been looking at all those mornings when I had found her in what my father still thought of as Verity's tower. Questing endlessly into the multitude of life with her Wit, as though eventually, if only she tried hard enough, she could reach across the distance in time and space and find the faint echo of Verity's spirit encased in black stone, find her three dearest friends guarding him.

A large, gray head nosed its way under my arms, under my chin, and then I was gripping Nighteyes by the hair on his back and weeping into his fur. Cold fingers curled protectively around mine, buried in his fur, and an arm wrapped around my back. My father and Beloved held us and one another as they shared my grief. 

It was a few moments, or perhaps a few eternities, before we resurfaced. I felt drained. It helped, having all three share my emotions, my loss, but it was a thorny comfort, for I shared theirs, too. So much. Too much for my mind. I was but one, and they were three, and three such lives as theirs would have been too much for anyone, let alone me.

_Why carry everything with you all the time_? Nighteyes was framing his thoughts simply, reasonably. _You don't pick up your den when you leave in the morning. You do not carry your litter mates and your past kills and your mates and cubs with you when you go hunting. It's not possible. So why all these thoughts? Carry only what you need in the now. The rest will be there when you need it again, like your den, or your pack, just where you left it._

I closed my eyes, contained the stormy sea of emotions and memories within me, just me, for a moment, felt it lap against the confines of my walls, looking for a way to break free. He was right. It was too much, and I couldn't possibly function with all this in my mind. I would have to leave them behind, everything that wasn't mine. It was what I had come to do, after all: give away the memories that had never belonged to me. But they had shown me so much in return, and for this one moment, it was all mine.

"I should go," I whispered, but remained in their embrace.

"We know," they whispered back, and held me tight.

It felt like a very long time before we could let go of each other, but eventually, someone shifted, and we parted, the four of us in theory, and me from the one of them in truth. 

My father stood, and held out his hand to help Beloved up. Nighteyes flowed to his feet, stretched and jumped to the floor, padding over to stand against my father's legs as he hoisted me up like a child, held me for one moment longer, his brow pressed against mine in farewell. As he set me down, Nighteyes pushed gently against my chest.

Finally, I looked up at Beloved, who was smiling at me with such wonder and joy in his eyes that I felt my heart lurch sideways in my chest. He said no word of farewell, and made no move to touch me, but somehow that smile felt like the softest embrace.

I turned and, for the lack of any other means to leave, walked to the door. My throat felt thick and scratchy when I cleared it and managed to say, "I'll... I'll visit you, again." Not like this, I thought, and already missed it. Only the force of my stolen memories spilling over the edges of my mind, combined with my Skill and Wit, had woken them this time. But I would visit them, and sit by the Wolf and tell him of my life, and somewhere, deep in their eternal slumber, they would hear my stories, and know their daughter.

But I could not stay, nor could they save me again by pulling me into their world. Like Nighteyes had said, they were whole, and while I was their pack, I was not of their whole. I could not help looking over my shoulder one last time, to see them standing together, separate yet united in their gentle pretense of this cabin and domestic bliss. I had yet to find my place in time and space, but they had found theirs. Against all odds, fated but never meant to be, they had found it.

I stepped out through the door into the void.

There was long, never-ending split second in which their memories, real and possible, tugged at me, whirled in my mind, endeavored to exist all at once. I was my father running down a cobbled street with Nosy; I was the Fool tickling for fish in the Mountains, on my belly in the grass, flanked by my father and Nighteyes. Like a fevered dream, the disjointed images flashed through my mind, scrabbling for a hold in me.

Beloved looking down at my father on a golden afternoon, his smile slowly fading as he asked, "Have you no greeting for me, Fitz?" only for my father to wordlessly open his arms to him.

My father, fevered and weary and recovering from an arrow wound, watching the shadow of the Fool against the fire at the hearth, through blurred eyes, certain that he was safe, certain that the Fool would stand between him and the world.

My father and mother coming into the Withywoods library, where I was sitting by the fire, learning my letters by reading out loud to Beloved, to announce dinner; my father reaching a gloved hand to take mine, my mother offering my blind teacher her arm, and Beloved smiling at her as he took it.

A touch of silvered fingertips on an upturned wrist, and the Fool laughing in delight and surprise as he cried, voice and soul, "You do love me!"

King Changer turning to grin at his advisor, exclaiming, "You, name my firstborn? You, who have in five years yet to come up with a name for yourself?", and the Fool laughing easily and quipping that he enjoyed watching the nobles struggle to come up with a polite way to address the royal advisor, Lord Fool, far too much to arm them with a name.

The Fool pressing his brow against my father's in a dimly lit room and whispering, "If there must be another my fate is twined around, I am glad it is you.”

Amber tiptoeing behind Tom Badgerlock in an Elderling chamber they were helping the Khuprus family investigate, setting a dusty old crown on his locks and attempting to dash away, only for Tom to whirl around, grasp her wrist and spin her into his arms in one smooth motion; Amber's breath catching on a softly whispered "My king" before he kissed her.

Beloved sinking down on his knees before a tunnel mouth, flooded full with seawater, and screaming his loss and loneliness to the heavens above.

My father raising a rooster crown high above his head and roaring, "I take his death!"

Like a bowstring stretched taut for too long, I snapped back into my own mind, and started awake with a sob torn from the deepest corners of my soul, and opened my eyes to an infinite whiteness, the unforgiving cold already freezing my tears on my face. I was on my side in the snow, and just at the edge of my vision, a massive wolf's paw curled protectively around me. He was asleep again.

"Oh Bee, thank Eda!"

Spark. She scrambled into my view, having instantly noticed my awakening, and was all over me before i could sit up, tugging me into a seated position, brushing snow from my cheek, fixing the bright cap that had almost slipped from my head. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and her nose was pink from more than cold. I drew in a long, shuddering breath and shooed her hands away, feeling crowded and overwhelmed and not quite certain of who I was.

"What...?" I croaked, and was taken by a coughing fit, as though I had not used my voice for a long time.

"Oh, Bee," Spark repeated miserably, her gloved hands twisting together listlessly now that they could not be busied fussing over me anymore. Tears clung to her lashes, but her voice did not shake as she said, "Our queen. My queen."

She paused, as though unable to continue, and I bowed my head and squeezed my eyes shut against a fresh wave of grief and stinging tears. I heard Spark sniffle, swallow, accept that somehow I already knew, and go on in a small voice, "And when I ran back to get you, and discovered you sprawled in the snow like a felled tree, I thought..." She choked on her words. "I'm so glad you are alright, Bee."

I kept my eyes down, unable to meet the pain I would see mirrored in her eyes, but I reached out and pat her hand resting on her knee. I was as awkward at giving comfort as I was at receiving it, but her gloved fingers clenching around the fabric of her thick leggings before she turned her hand to grasp mine assured me that what little I could offer was appreciated.

We sat like that for what felt like a long time, sitting in the snow with our hands clasped, Spark processing her loss and drawing strength from me, and I feeling around in my head for memories, like a person running her tongue over her teeth after a fistfight to see if she had lost any. 

There were gaps, memories I was frustratingly certain I had just possessed but could no longer access, and whispers of things almost remembered, just behind me but gone when I turned and tried to see who was whispering. My mind was a confused jumble of thoughts and memories that I was hesitant to claim as mine.

I heard Spark draw a deep breath, and glanced up, to see her bite her lip as she finally dared to start, “Bee, is there nothing…” She trailed off, then started again, “I remember…”

I lowered my eyes again before she could ask properly. She had seen me heal Boy-o all those years ago, had heard Kettricken and me discuss my father bringing his Fool back to life. _To every creature there is given both a place and a time, and when that time is over, we have to let them go_. Nettle’s words, but I was not certain if the memory was mine or my father’s. Taking my silence for the answer it was, Spark fell quiet again. I heard her breath out, slowly, in one long sigh, letting go of her hopes that she might see her queen rise again, and then sit up straighter, draw in her new reality with another breath.

I looked away from her, at the wolf, and tried to order my mind around _my_ new reality. The memories they had shared with me, the memories I had stolen and returned to them, were fading fast, mere whispers and ghostly visions at the very edge of my vision, now, but I remembered the little cabin. I remembered its warmth, its clutter, its sense of belonging. Most of what I had seen there no longer held much meaning to me, for I no longer had access to the memories that had made them important, but I remembered well, and always would, my fathers by the table, working quietly, contently, by the light of my mother’s candles, my drawings displayed proudly on their table, the quilt my mother had made for me on a bed no one needed in an eternal evening. I was wanted, I was loved, I was family.

I found that I did have it in me to find peace in their peace after all.

I was also alone in my head in a way I hadn’t been for long time, and for all that it was terrifying, it also tasted sweet, like fresh air after rain. I had seen my roots, and they ran deep. Now I had only to reach out and grow into my place in time and space.

I took a deep breath, released Spark’s hand, and pushed myself to my feet in the crunching snow. I looked around, startled to find that the short winter day was already drawing to a close. I looked down at Spark, and she looked up at me, her eyes still red-rimmed and her nose and cheeks still red from both the cold and her tears. I held out a hand, and her lips twitched in a ghost of a smile as she took it and stood up. There was much to do; we had a queen to bury, and a friend to mourn.

Without a word, we walked into the nightfall.


End file.
